WEEK 2

Date: Sunday, April 10th
Time: 6:00– 7:15 PM
Temperature: 57˚
Weather: Partly Cloudy

The woods are noticeably greener today

It's later in the evening than last time so the woods are consumed by a soft shadow, the colors aren't as bright but I think it's more relaxing.

There's a woodpecker going at it behind me on– he's been pecking the shit out of that tree for like 15 minutes now. The bird is pretty small, he's high up there so it's hard to tell but I'd say no larger than 6-8 inches tall. He's mostly black, or dark grey, with a long, narrow beak and splotches of white on his his head and back. 

There's definitely more green here this time, some of the deciduous trees have become insecure about their bodies now that more animals are out and they're frantically trying to cover up. The canopy is a lot thicker, and I'm noticing a lot more leaf shapes. One tree has 3-inch leaves with three points that look like a maple, but the only maple in the field guide is the big-leaf maple and it doesn't look like that one.. Another tree has long, dark-green ovular leaves that jut out of central points like stars at the end of each branch.

sword fern

There are at least two kinds of ferns here: sword ferns, with long fronds lined with dark-green jagged blades, and another kind I can't identify with light-green fronds that expand like fractals out from the ground.

For some reason I'm noticing a lot more insect life than last time. The soil is full of pill bugs quietly going about their business with prehistoric wisdom. The webs seem to be numerous and a few fat brown garden spiders are the culprits. I definitely found myself swatting at a mosquito or two which is also new.

At first the sounds of the forest are just garbled chaos like the sounds of the U district from an open window, but the longer I sit here, the more I can here the conversations that are going on all around me. A bird will sing a beautiful tune and another will repeat her faintly on the other side of the forest. I wonder how the birds pick the songs they want to sing...

These bushes have been cut apart by someone...

mystery fern

The evidence of human intervention is more obvious to me than last time. It's almost like I saw right past it at first, but now I can't help but notice the stumps and severed branches– the unnatural clumps of branches and clutter in certain spots. It looks like someone's been trying to eliminate a particularly nasty looking bush with gnarly thorny leaves like a holly tree's. I wonder who's coming down here...

(Noble Fir?) sapling that the sketches I made were based on